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Ambiguity in hybrid warfare

ANDREW MUMFORD

Hybrid CoE Strategic Analysis / 24

SEPTEMBER 2020

Hybrid CoE Strategic Analysis is typically a short paper written by academic and research community experts. Strategic Analyses are based on long-term research experience, or on current or completed research projects. The idea behind the Strategic Analysis papers is to enhance understanding of different phenomena in the realm of hybrid threats. They do not present direct recommendations but aim to explain processes and identify gaps in knowledge and understanding, as well as highlight trends and future challenges. Each Strategic Analysis paper includes a literature list for further reading. Topics are related to Hybrid CoE’s work in all of its main functions: training and exercises, communities of interest (hybrid influencing; strategy and defence; and vulnerabilities and resilience) as well as research and analysis.

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This analysis represents an attempt to redirect

the discussion on ambiguity in modern hybrid

warfare, and to stake out its own independent con-

ceptual space, through an assessment of its role in

the prosecution of hybrid warfare. The term hybrid warfare is used in this paper to denote a particu-lar sub-set of activities that can come under the umbrella term ‘hybrid threats’, which includes the strategic application of the use of (ambiguous) force to gain territory or attain another strategic goal. Hybrid warfare, unlike other types of hybrid

activities such as interference and influence opera-

tions, is constitutive of visible acts of coercion that

combine overt and covert military force in conjunc-

tion with political disruption. Actors responsible for

hybrid warfare do not require deniability for their

actions precisely because responsibility for the use

of force is disconnected from the ambiguous way

in which it is applied. The key aim of ambiguity is not necessarily to hide the true actor behind the activity, but ultimately to stymie a legitimate response.

For example, a little thought experiment could

proceed from the contention that the Russian

annexation of Crimea did not take place. This is

not to say that the Russian military intervention

in Ukraine did not occur in 2014. Nor should it be

regarded, in academic jargon, as a post-modernist

claim (such as that made by Jean Baudrillard, who

argued that the Gulf War did not happen nearly

thirty years ago because its outcome had, he

claimed, been pre-ordained before the war even

began). Instead, it is an acknowledgment of the

centrality of ambiguity to the conduct of hybrid

warfare and the deliberate cloud of uncertainty,

in regard to the actors and actions involved, that

hung over the Crimea conflict – not to mention

the ability of Russia to act just below the threshold

of legitimate retaliation. The Kremlin acted as if the

annexation had not occurred on its orders, and the

West was unable to respond with force of its own.

This analysis argues that the tactical application of ambiguous force has been superseded by stra-tegic-level hybrid warfare, given the heightened acknowledgement of risk in modern warfare and a shift in the global power balance. Although

acknowledging that hybrid warfare as a Western

concept is not new, it has now attained a level of

strategic usage never before seen amongst a set of

actors – namely regional ‘revisionist powers’ – aim-

ing to turn modest military capabilities into regional

change whilst remaining below a threshold of

conventional response.

Ambiguity is an integral component of hybrid warfare – and therefore also of the strategic landscape of contemporary conflict – yet it remains an elusive concept that has received little systematic scholarly attention. There are

large or growing pools of Western literature on

related concepts, such as deterrence, secrecy, and

covert action. But there is surprisingly little on the

attendant concept of ambiguity, which has yet to be

adequately separated from descriptions of those

activities just listed.

The concept of ambiguity in Western strategic

studies has historically been located in the litera-

ture on nuclear strategy, where it has been asso-

ciated with the notion of deterrence. In his study

of British nuclear strategy in the decades after the

Second World War, John Baylis identified two dis-

tinct schools of thought on the issue. He differen-

tiated between those strategists advocating ‘delib-

erate ambiguity’, whereby nuclear deterrence is

Ambiguity in hybrid warfare

“Ambiguity is an integral component of hybrid warfare, yet it remains an elusive concept. Understanding it allows us to explain why the tactical application of ambiguous force has been superseded by strategic-level hybrid warfare. The key aim of ambiguity is not necessarily to hide the true actor behind the activity, but ultimately to stymie a legitimate response.” – writes Andrew Mumford from the University of Nottingham.

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enhanced by the ‘certainty of uncertainty’ regard-

ing the possible use of nuclear weapons, and ‘unin-

tentional ambiguity’ in which uncertainty is created

inadvertently through strategic discord arising

from bureaucratic politics or the restraints of the

international system. Hybrid warfare rests firmly on what Baylis labelled as ‘deliberate ambiguity’, because its adoption as a strategic tool by states such as Russia and China is evidence that ambig-uous uses of force are no longer the product of uncertainties about how to attain objectives, but the result of calculated decision-making. To this

extent, the making of a hybrid war strategy explic-

itly creates the conditions for ambiguity because

of the way in which such a strategy is tasked with

harnessing ambiguous ways to use force below the

threshold of legitimate response, embedding it

within a combination of overt and covert military

means, and applying it to the political ends of the

strategy. As later sections of this paper go on to

discuss, hybrid warfare creates ambiguity not nec-

essarily to mask the identity of the actors involved,

but to deter the possibility of conventional retalia-

tory action.

Calculated ambiguity

After the Gulf War ended in 1991, the Secretary

of State during the conflict, James Baker, acknowl-

edged that the Bush administration’s deliberate

refusal to clarify whether it would use nuclear

weapons to defeat the regime of Saddam Hussein

was an act of what he labelled as ‘calculated ambi-

guity’. They left the process deliberately vague to

keep opponents guessing and forced them to check

their own behaviour. To re-appropriate Baker’s phrase, modern acts of hybrid warfare rest firmly on a strategy of calculated ambiguity – an ambi-guity of origin, intent and responsive measures. The Gulf War that Baker helped win was the same

war that Baudrillard provocatively insisted had not

happened because it had been ‘won in advance’ by

American superiority. Of the Gulf conflict, Baudril-

lard observed that: ‘No accidents occurred in this

war, everything unfolded according to program-

matic order… Nothing occurred which would have

metamorphosed events into a duel.’ He could very

well have been describing events in Crimea in

2014, which included the subversive application of

a combination of operations using proxies, conven-

tional military interventions, and cyber-attacks to

coercively dissuade retaliation. It is such calculated

ambiguity that guarantees the outcome of such

‘non-wars’ (as Baudrillard labelled the Gulf War)

that we call hybrid wars today. They are ‘non-wars’

in the sense that conventional force is lacking,

traditional modes of retaliation are muted, thresh-

olds of response are blurred, and the kinetic use

of force between two opposing military powers is

circumvented. In short, hybrid wars often do not

look like wars at all. It is the implausible deniabil-ity of protagonists claiming events are not being orchestrated by themselves that lends hybrid warfare such a surrealistic quality. They treat

knowledge about the conflict and accusations of

responsibility as fundamentally politically-charged.

Interpretations of the conflict are therefore

treated as normative – and the ambiguous applica-

tion of force gives them the political cover to do so.

Ambiguity and ‘plausible deniability’

States often resort to perpetrating hybrid war-

fare because they feel the seductive strategic pull

of wrapping themselves in a cloak of invisibility

that the ambiguous use of force alluringly offers.

However, if significant legal or forensic evidence

emerges linking a state to a particular attack (as

happened during revelations about responsibility

for the Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran’s main nuclear

facility in 2012), then the cloak of invisibility soon

reveals itself to be the Emperor’s new clothes.

The waging of hybrid warfare does not guaran-tee perpetual deniability for the perpetrators. An appreciation of the implausible deniability

surrounding acts of hybrid warfare is important

because ambiguous use of force, like that seen in

Crimea, is an open secret that appeals to political

actors in the international system who want to

boost hard power credentials below the thresh-

old of legitimate response. Hybrid warfare does not, and need not, assume a shroud of secrecy in order to be successful. Implausible deniability is not an unintended consequence. It can be a deliberate powerplay aimed at communicating a message whilst utilizing enough ambiguity of

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action to avoid retaliation or escalation. Although

the West did not buy the Russian pretence of

no control over events on the ground in Crimea,

Moscow’s efforts to project an aggressive posture

to hinder Western escalation certainly worked.

Implausible deniability is the manifestation of ambiguity in the prosecution of hybrid warfare.

Hybridity and the ‘fog of war’

The father of modern strategic thought, Carl von

Clausewitz, alludes in his seminal treatise On War

to what others have subsequently labelled ‘the fog

of war’ to describe the absence of information a

commander has across a multitude of levels, from

the tactical to the grand strategic. Building an intel-

ligence picture of an enemy’s intent, force struc-

ture, weapon capabilities and so forth remains a

crucial part of any strategy. Hybrid warfare repre-sents the foggiest form of war given the deliber-ate obfuscations that occur in hiding the identity of the perpetrator state. Not knowing exactly who

the ‘enemy’ is, presents the most fundamental of

challenges to strategic formulation. To paraphrase

General Sherman during the American Civil War,

war waged in a hybrid manner puts the opponents

on the horns of a dilemma: over-reaction looks

pre-emptive and disproportionate if clear

responsibility for an attack has not been estab-

lished; but the lack of a response leaves a state

open to death by a thousand cuts. This is the pre-

carious tightrope that policymakers must tread

when determining how to respond to the use of

hybrid warfare by other states given the pervasive

ambiguity with which hybrid warfare is waged.

It is also worth considering how the centrality

of ambiguity to hybrid warfare circumvents what

Thomas Schelling called ‘the art of commitment’

in military strategy. By Schelling’s own admission,

most military commitments ‘are ultimately ambig-

uous in detail’, either deliberately so or ‘because

of the plain impossibility of defining them in exact

detail’. Such constructed ambiguity leads to what

he famously labelled ‘salami tactics’, whereby rules

and norms are gradually sliced away, avoiding any

major transgression but shifting the boundaries

of expected behaviour on a piecemeal basis to

avoid retaliation. Ambiguity is therefore the curtain to mask the tactics of norm erosion in the international arena. This is the strategic envi-

ronment that democratic states or the EU and

NATO member states find themselves operating in.

The challenge for all is to find more clarity amidst

the ambiguity.

Author

Andrew Mumford is, as of August 2020, Professor of War Studies at the University of Nottingham,

where he is Deputy Head of the School of Politics and International Relations. He is a member of

the Hybrid CoE expert pool on security and has consulted the UK Ministry of Defence and NATO on

issues relating to hybrid warfare. His latest book, The West’s War Against ISIS, will be published in 2021.

He is the editor of the new book series ‘Studies in Contemporary Warfare’ by IB Tauris. His previous

books include Counter-Insurgency Warfare and the Anglo-American Alliance (2018), Proxy Warfare (2013),

and The Counter-Insurgency Myth (2011).

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